The Getaway Special

3

“Be calm,” Gerry said as he floated up through the mid-deck hatchway with the .45 from the emergency survival kit in his hand. “Allen, you may continue with your jump. Judy, you will please come away from the controls.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“I’m appropriating this vessel for the Russian Federation . You won’t be harmed so long as you do as I say.”

“Come off it, Gerry. You’re not going to fire that thing in here. One stray shot and you’d lose all your air.”

“There is that risk. I’d have preferred a less destructive weapon, but the survival kit doesn’t carry a dart gun. I’ll just have to be careful not to miss, won’t I? Now come away. Slowly, that’s it.” He reached out and stopped her in midair, leaving her floating where he could see her move long before she reached anything to push off against.

He glanced out the aft windows at the surface of the Moon beyond the cargo bay and said, “Allen, you may move us away now.” He kept the gun aimed at Judy as he spoke.

Allen swallowed. “Right.” He turned to the keyboard and began keying in coordinates.

“Why are you doing this, Gerry?” Judy asked. “You’re not a Russian.”

“That depends on your definition. I’ve been a sleeper agent since before I entered the space program, since before the Union collapsed. In any case, my nationality is not the issue. What matters is my belief that the Federation should have this device.”

Allen cleared his throat. “I, uh, I was planning on giving it to everybody. You see, part of the reason I did things the way I did was to get everybody’s attention so they wouldn’t think it was a hoax when I sent the plans out over the internet.”

Gerry shook his head. “A noble thought. Unfortunately, the world isn’t ready for it. Russia will have to keep your idea secret until the rest of humanity is sufficiently civilized to handle something this dangerous.”

“Bullshit,” Judy said. “You can’t believe that. You want to keep it for yourself. You want Russia to be a big superpower again, and you think this will—”

Gerry waved the pistol at her. “Be quiet. Allen, you will make the jump now.”

Allen turned back to his keyboard and pushed the transmit key. The radio sent its timing pulse, but nothing else happened.

“What—?” He looked out the window, pushed the key again, and again. Still nothing changed.

“I must have miskeyed it,” he said. He entered the coordinates again, canceled the tinier and reset it, and hit “Jump” again.

Still nothing.

“Something’s wrong.”

“Allen.” Gerry had the gun pointed at him now.

“I’m not lying! It’s not working! It’s hardly surprising, with all the jumps we’ve been doing in a row. Something’s probably burned out. It’s still an experimental model, you know.”

“Then you will find the problem and fix it.” Gerry glanced out the window and added, “I suggest you do it quickly.”

Judy followed his glance. The Moon’s surface was definitely closer now.

Allen said, “You’ll have to go out and get the canister.”

“Not until you’ve exhausted the possibilities inside. The problem may be in the computer.”

“It isn’t. The signal is reaching the radio, and all the data uses one line. The problem is in the canister.”

Gerry thought it through and nodded. “All right, but Judy will go out and get it. I prefer to remain here where I can watch you.”

The Moon was larger still by the time Judy stepped out into the cargo bay. She had cut the suiting-up time to its bare minimum, but it still took time breathing pure oxygen to wash the nitrogen out of her bloodstream, and even Gerry with his pistol couldn’t force her to go outside before she was sure she was safe from the bends. Once she was out she took time for one quick look—she could see their motion now, the cratered surface growing inexorably closer by the minute—then she unfastened the “mystery” canister and climbed back into the airlock with it under her arm. When she got back inside she handed it to Allen and started to pull off her helmet.

“Leave it on,” Gerry said. Judy could hear the tension in his voice even through the intercom. She understood the reason for it, and for his order. She wouldn’t have time to become uncomfortable in the suit. If Allen found the problem she would have to take the canister back outside, and if he didn’t they would crash into the Moon; either way she wouldn’t have to worry about the suit for very long.

Allen floated over to the wall of lockers in the mid-deck and opened the one holding the tool kit. Then he opened the canister and held it so the light shone down inside. Judy looked over his shoulder and saw a maze of wires and circuit boards. Allen looked at them for a minute, then reached in and pushed a few wires around. He let go of the canister and left it floating in front of him, looked up, and said, “I think I’ve found it. Judy, could you help hold this a minute?”

She nodded and reached out to take it from him.

“Here, over on this side,” he said, pulling her around so she was on his left. Gerry floated to his right with the gun at the ready. Carl was still unconscious in his bunk beside Judy; evidently Gerry had given him a sedative when he had the chance.

Allen handed the canister to Judy, positioning her like a piece of lab equipment until she held it at the right angle, then he pulled a screwdriver out of the tool kit, reached into the canister’s open end with it, and looked sideways at Gerry.

“I’ve just taken over the ship,” he said. “Now float that gun over here, very gently.”

Gerry didn’t look amused. “What are you talking about? Get busy and fix that before I—”

“Before you what? I give you ten seconds to surrender or I take this screwdriver and stir. Shoot me before I make the repairs and you get the same result. Maybe they’ll name the crater after you.”

Gerry shifted the gun to point at Judy. She felt her breath catch, but Allen shifted his head to be the target again. “Won’t work. You can’t risk hitting me and you know it. Float the gun over. Five seconds.” Allen slowly threaded the screwdriver in between the wires until his hand was inside the canister, saying all the while, “Four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, one—very good, Gerry. Judy, catch that.”

She let go of the canister and fielded the gun, sandwiching it between her gloved hands, but she couldn’t get her finger in the trigger guard. Her heart pounding, she said, “Allen…”

He saw the problem. “Trade me,” he said, letting go of the canister and taking the gun from her. “Get in the bottom bunk, Gerry.”

Wordlessly, Gerry drifted over and slid into the bunk. Allen closed the panel after him, then hunted in the tool kit until he found a coil of what looked like bell wire and used that to tie the panel shut. Then he gave the gun back to Judy and began looking inside the canister again, poking and prodding around.

“What are you doing?” Judy asked.

“Looking for the problem.”

“I thought you said you’d found it.”

“I lied. I didn’t figure there was much point in looking until we had Gerry safely out of the way.”

“But what if—never mind. Just hurry. We don’t have much time.”

“It won’t take long. If it isn’t something simple I won’t be able to fix it anyway. I don’t have any test equipment. All I brought along were spare parts.”

Judy propped herself against the lockers, her back against the wall and her feet out at an angle against the floor. She’d discovered the position on her first flight. It almost felt like gravity, at least to the legs, and it had the added advantage of holding her in place. She said, “I can’t believe you. Do you have the slightest idea what this means to the human race?”

“I think I do, yes.”

“Then why are you risking it like this? You should have made it public the moment you realized what you had. Good god, if the secret dies with us now, we—”

“It won’t. I arranged an internet mailing to every member of INSANE, triggered by the first pulse from the timing beacon. The plans should be arriving in people’s email all over the world just about now.” Allen raised his voice so Gerry could hear him, too. “There are thirty-seven Russians in INSANE, Gerry. They each got the email, too. So you see, none of this really would have made much difference in the long run anyway. This was just a public demonstration so they wouldn’t waste time trying to decide if it would really work. I’ve asked everyone to put the plans on their web sites, too, so anybody can download them. I don’t think any elite group should have a monopoly on space travel, not even INSANE.” He paused, squinted inside the canister, and said, “I think I’ve found it. All those jumps in a row overheated a voltage regulator.”

He opened his personal locker and got out a baggie full of electronics parts. He fished around until he found the one he needed, a half-inch square with three legs, and replaced the one in the canister with it. He put the lid back on and held it out. “Okay, you can put it back now.”

Judy took the canister and pushed herself toward the airlock. Before she closed the door, she said, “Why don’t I stay out there while you try it? It’ll save time if we have to bring it in again.”

“Good idea.”

She closed the airlock door and began depressurizing it. It seemed to take forever to bleed the air out, but she knew that it only took three minutes. She could hear her own breathing inside her helmet, just the way she’d imagined she would when she was a little girl dreaming about space. The suit stiffened a little as the outside pressure dropped. When the gauge reached zero she opened the outer hatch and stepped out into the cargo bay.

The Moon was a flat gray wall of craters in front of her. She watched it for a moment, thinking, This is what it looked like to the Apollo crews. And I thought I’d never get to see it.

What sorts of other things would she be seeing that she had only dreamed of before? The other planets, almost certainly. Other stars? Why not? She knew she was going to be in trouble when she got back, but Allen’s invention practically assured her that the trouble wouldn’t last Space-trained pilots were going to be in very short supply before long. NASA couldn’t afford to ground her now, but even if they did she knew she could get a job flying somebody else’s ship. Or even her own, for that matter. Anything that would hold air would work. She wasn’t above flying a pressurized septic tank, if that’s what it took to stay in space.

Judy heard a nervous voice over the intercom. “Having problems out there?”

She shook herself back to the present. The Moon was drawing closer by the second. “No. Hang on.” She fastened the getaway special canister back to the cargo bay wall and plugged in the data link to the ship. “How’s that?”

“I’m getting power. Let me run the diagnostic check.” A few seconds later, Allen said, “Looks good. I’m keying in the coordinates.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay and admire the view?”

“Uh… some other time, maybe.”

“Right.” Judy reached out to steady herself against the airlock door. She tilted her head back for one last look at the Moon, so near she almost felt she could touch it. Someday she would. Someday soon. She cleared her throat. “Whenever you’re—”

But it had already disappeared.